First day of Sea Bird!!!

Ok, so where did I leave off, right the FIRST DAY OF SEABIRD RESCUE. If you don’t know what seabird rescue is let me tell you (I don’t know how you would). It is an organization that rescues seabirds especially pelicans… and that’s about all you need to know. Oh right they also rescue sea turtles, which will turn into an interesting story later on. But right now let me tell you about the first day of seabird. So essentially we arrived there on the bus and all piled into one large room where a prego girl came out with a colorful bird on her shoulders. Now let me tell you at this point I had no idea what we would be doing at seabird and was incredibly excited about it. Our tour began with a couple of videos and a tour of the grounds. The videos go me excited because it showed a lot of the rescues that they had done (including dolphins, whales, sea turtles, and birds). What I learned was that essentially we were going to be doing some research for Seabird, particularly the distinction between a seabird, water bird, and shorebird. We would also be feeding some animals and cleaning cages. At the time there was only one bird in their care, known as the Giant Petrol. This was a hug bird even in its youth. It was about the size of a full-grown vulture. It has the weirdest looking beak that I have ever seen, when I figure out my camera I will post pictures. This bird is known for taking a bird known as an Albatross and grabbing them by the neck and drowning them in the ocean so you don’t want to get your fingers to close to it. It was having trouble with its oil gland, which prevents seabirds from drowning. They were doing what they could to stimulate the gland and get it secreting again. But ya seabird was cool, and so far its only gotten cooler. After Seabird we met up with Phil and went on a nature hike with him. We ended up seeing some wallabies and he had us eat different random plants throughout the bush. Later that night Rusty and I had the great idea of going down and jumping in the tea tree lake around 10 oclock on a freezing cold night. We tried to gather up as many people as we could and only ended up with four. So we put on our bathing suits and headed down to the lake (Me, Rusty, Eleanor, and Chelsea). Jordan and Piper decided to come watch us and followed us on bikes. Eventually we built up the courage and jumped in. It turns out that the water was actually really warm compared to what we’ve been swimming in. It was awesome because all of the stars were out and the water felt fantastic. We stayed in the water for about a half an hour just messing around. Turns out that Jordan and Piper had the bright idea to steal all of our towels, so it was a cold jog back to camp. Saturday I really have no idea what I did on that day, probably nothing spectacular besides the whole still being in Australia part.

Sunday, I decided to go to church again. This time it was actually held in a building about a 25-minute walk away from camp. They had a really good speaker this time. He was very passionate about what he was speaking on and this always makes people easier to listen to in my book. After the service was over we stayed and talked with members of the church and enjoyed a little birthday celebration. After church we headed back to camp through market day in Lennox. People come and set up shop in tents every other Sunday here and some of them have some very interesting things to sell. Well I didn’t end up buying anything and went back to camp for lunch. Later that day a large group of people decided to go kayak in the lake. Once again it turned into a major battle where everyone was flipping everyone else. Then Monday we got the privilege of going and talking to the mayor of Ballina council (pretty boring), revisiting seabird (same videos, so pretty boring), and visiting a Tea Tree factory (not that bad). Tuesday I got the privilege of going on my FIRST SCUBA TRIIIIP. It was a little overwhelming to be honest. I wasn’t that nervous getting into the water of going under for that matter. The major issue was the incredibly strong current. You would be sitting still in the water and then all of the sudden be swept away by an incredibly hard current. The visibility was also pretty poor but we still saw 6 grey nurse sharks, a bunch of Wobbegongs, huge schools of huge fish, and a huge stingray. I am looking forward to dives with better visibility and less of a current. Nothing else really happened until the marine biology trip on Thursday where we got to snorkel on a rocky beach. The only thing I really saw though was a Wobbegong. I am going to try once again to get some pictures up because apparently I am boring some people (HOPE)…… ONLY TWO WEEKS BEHIND NOW!!!!!